#fulldisclosurefriday – Discovering a Dairy Allergy

#fulldisclosurefriday- That moment when you go out to dinner with your family visiting from out of town and 10 minutes later, you notice your toddlers hand has blown up with hives.

For a while, we’ve had a strong hunch that our youngest has been pretty sensitive to dairy. She would be a DISASTER if we would give her regular cows milk. So, we have been giving her A2 milk and we thought it was sufficient. However, within the past few months, we’ve been seeing an increase in challenging behaviors. I’ve been wondering if ‘said behaviors’ was because she is a 2 year old or is it medical? Will we ever know, haha?

Eating Mac N Cheese

My mom and two nieces flew in this past weekend to help us celebrate the girls birthdays. These girls came with a food agenda and we had to hit up all of their favorite west coast spots during their visit. One of those places included heading to downtown Huntington Beach and we ate at Bruxie (Great choice ladies, this is one my favorite places too!). Quinn happens to love their macaroni and cheese meal. She GOBBLED it up!

10 minutes later….

Whoa-

This has never happened before! This girl would bathe in macaroni and cheese if we let her so you can imagine my surprise when I identified her hand. Quinn is a lefty as well so it makes sense that her left hand was more effected than her right.

Operation Take Dairy Out of Diet Mode!

Once we noticed that dairy could be a potential allergy, my husband and I immediately decided to take dairy out of her diet.

OMGOOOOOODNESS, dairy is in freaking EVERYTHING!

Our first priority was to find a milk alternative for her beloved ‘baba’. She still has a sippy of milk before bedtime and nap time. I knew this would be the biggest challenge of taking dairy out of her diet.

In a “perfect world”, I would slowly fade out the A2 milk and slowly introduce soy milk, almond milk or whichever milk alternative we would choose. However, with how her hand looked, I did not want to waste anymore time putting dairy in her body. Who knows what the inside of her body looked like :(. So, we went cold turkey and went straight to finding a replacement milk…………

On a positive note, the hubby hasn’t minded having all of the non-dairy options available, haha! I could barely get the above photo. These were the only cartons left because he is devouring Quinn’s “cast-aways”.

The result…

The most luck that we have had is just giving her straight water in her sippy cup. So, we will just be giving multi-vitamins to ensure she is getting all of her nutrients (in terms of calcium) and increasing her fruits and veggie intake.

But man is she give us a run for our money this week!

Also, I am open to any and all advice in this new life we are entering to dairy free food options :).